PLATINUM SPIRALS (1977) was commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts and dedicated to the memory of my father, who was a geologist and mining engineer. Platinum is a mineral whose internal properties reveal a very malleable and flexible set of characteristics. It is said that an ounce of platinum can be stretched into a mile. A lot of this piece is about the stretching of lines of ten upward in “spirals.” Other times, there is a quiet kind of “rocking” pattern that “holds” the action in place.

Solo violin pieces start with a built-in advantage: they sound almost inherently concentrated and pure. That was how Joan Tower’s “Platinum Spirals” (1976) sounded Tuesday night, full of intense private passion.